Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (7 page)

Hardy had no idea what was in the safety deposit box, but judging from Graham’s reaction, when he found out, it was going to be ugly.

Hardy put a hand on Graham’s shoulder and stood up. The interview was over.

He was thoroughly disheartened. It had been a long and wasted morning. He hadn’t done much for Graham Russo up until now, and he knew there wasn’t anything he’d be able to do until this chapter had played itself out.

4

Mario Giotti sat at his regular table at Stagnola’s on the Wharf. He sipped his iced tea and gazed with a studiedly placid expression down to the fishing boats moored outside his window. He was a well-known man in the city and he thought it important to maintain a dignified, serene persona in public. In any event, it was a gorgeous May morning, a Tuesday, and when he’d arrived at the restaurant, he’d apparently been in fine spirits.

And why not? He was a U.S. federal judge, appointed for life, and he lived in the best city in the world. A vibrant sixty-year-old, he kept his sparkplug of a body in terrific shape by either jogging or spending an hour a day at the workout room in the basement of the federal courthouse. With his steel-gray eyes, his unlined face, the prominent nose, he knew he cut a dignified figure.

Although just at this moment, he was struggling to control his expression. The judge’s wife was late. He was peeved with her and didn’t want to show it.

He hated to wait, always had. Fortunately, in his life nowadays, people most often waited for him, waited on him. He never had to stand in a line. He came into his courtroom and he had a staff that made damn sure that the day’s business was ready to proceed upon his entrance. But he still had to wait for his wife. Always had, probably always would.

As he looked down at the fishing boats, a sigh escaped him. He wasn’t even aware of it. Coming here to Stagnola’s — which he did at least once a week when he wasn’t traveling — wasn’t so much a nostalgic experience as it was a return to his roots.

That’s how he felt about the place. It was his true home, his psychic touchstone. For sixty-five years, over three generations, the building had been Giotti’s Grotto.

The judge’s great-grandfather had opened the first cioppino stand here in the middle of the Depression, and it had stayed within the family, adding onto itself, growing into a Fisherman’s Wharf landmark, until Joey Stagnola had bought it from Mario’s father, Bruno, in 1982.

Mario was the last male of the Giotti line. But he’d been a lawyer, with dreams of becoming a judge. He wasn’t going to run a dago restaurant on the Wharf. His father, Bruno, understood — if he himself were young again and college educated, if he’d had the same options as his son, he’d do the same thing.

But Mario knew that secretly it had broken the old man’s heart. He sold the restaurant to Stagnola and, six months later, sitting in a red booth by one of these back windows, had died here. (He had just finished an after-lunch Sambuca and the coroner found three coffee beans — good Italian restaurants served them floating in the aperitif for luck — in his mouth, unchewed.)

‘More iced tea, Your Honor?’

Mauritio, the maitre-d‘, had sent the youngster over to check the judge’s glass. Mauritio always took good care of him.

Giotti gave his practiced, friendly nod to the white-jacketed waiter and the young man poured. The boy could have been him, forty-five years before, earnest and efficient, making sure the patrons were happy. He moved on to the next table and the judge sighed again.

‘You don’t look very cheerful. Is something wrong?’

Giotti hadn’t even noticed his wife’s approach. Pat Giotti was still a fine-looking woman, with an unlined, ageless face, high cheekbones, a graceful figure. He raised his face and she kissed him, then seated herself across the table, immediately reaching over and taking his hand, squeezing it. ‘Sorry I’m late. Are you all right?’

His face animated itself. ‘Just feeling old for a minute.’

‘You’re not old.’

‘For a minute, I said.’ He squeezed her hand. They had made love the night before and he was telling her he remembered very well. She was right, he wasn’t old.

‘Are you thinking about Sal?’

He shook his head. ‘Actually, no. The waiter just reminded me of when I used to work here.’ The judge looked down at the boats for a second. ‘Maybe a little.’

She eyed him carefully, seemed satisfied, then reached for a roll and broke it. ‘I’m sure it was for the best,’ she said. ‘Sal, I mean.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ he agreed. ‘It’s just…’ His voice trailed off. ‘I look down there at the moorings, I can almost see the
Signing Bonus
, see Sal waving up at me. It’s hard to imagine him gone.’

‘He’d lived his life, hon.’

‘He was my age. I think that’s part of it.’

‘He was sick, remember? He was dying anyway. It just would have gotten worse. His suffering’s over now.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘It isn’t all bad. It’s much better this way.’

‘I know you’re right.’ He looked out the window. ‘This was probably just the wrong table for today, being able to see down there. It brings back those memories.’

‘But this is
our
table, Mario. They hold it for you, the judge’s table.’

He squeezed her hand again. ‘I’m just saying he was my friend. I miss him, that’s all.’

‘The idea of him, love, the idea. He wasn’t the same friend at the end, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

She met his eyes again, squeezed his hand.

‘You must know that,’ she said.

‘I do know it, Pat. It’s better all around. It’s just not easy.’

The waiter came by and took their orders. Pat ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio to go with her scallops. The judge was having a crab Louis and his iced tea — of course, no wine. He was going back to court in the afternoon.

They sat in silence for a while, until her wine arrived. She took a taste, then put her glass down. ‘Did you read this morning’s paper? They’re saying maybe it wasn’t a suicide.’

‘Maybe? It wasn’t,’ the judge said flatly.

The wine seemed to stick in Pat Giotti’s throat. She took another sip to clear it. ‘Why do you say that?’

The judge shrugged. ‘It’s got all the earmarks of an assisted suicide. Look at the morphine vials, the labels removed. Some medical person was there, helped him along. I had Annie’ — his secretary — ‘stop by at the Hall of Justice and pick up a copy of the autopsy this morning.’

‘And?’

The judge thoughtfully tore a piece of his sourdough, then seemed to forget about it. ‘The morphine dose wasn’t that large. Acting alone, Sal would have probably done lots more to be sure. He had three more vials at his place he could have used. But whoever helped him put it right in the vein.’

‘Which would not have been enough in the muscle?’

Giotti nodded. ‘So it was a medical professional. At any rate, somebody who’d know that.’ In spite of the topic the judge had to smile in admiration. ‘You don’t forget anything, do you? What was that,
Ellison
?’

His wife looked pleased at the compliment. Giotti was referring to a medical malpractice case he’d heard on appeal a few years back,
U.S. v. Ellison Pharmaceuticals
, where the doctor’s decision to administer one of Ellison’s drugs intravenously (IV), rather than intramuscularly (IM), had proved fatal to a patient. The doctor had tried to place the blame on the drug company, but the strategy hadn’t worked; drugs injected directly into a vein had a great deal more effective potency than drugs administered IM, and Giotti had ruled that every doctor on the planet knew that, or ought to.

Pat Giotti, whose life revolved around her husband’s, made it a point to read as many of his cases as she could. She didn’t have a profession hadn’t worked since the earliest days of their marriage. She harbored a lingering fear that she and her husband might someday have nothing to talk about, so she kept up on the law as well as the trivia that each case provided.

Giotti sat back, letting go of his wife’s hand as the waiter set their plates in front of them. ‘One thing I’m sure of,’ he said. ‘We haven’t heard the end of it, especially now they’re saying it might not be a suicide.’

Pat Giotti put her fork down. ‘They haven’t done that, have they?’

‘If it’s not a suicide, it’s some kind of murder. And murder means it gets investigated.’

‘That may be the law, but they shouldn’t do that. They ought to just leave it alone.’

He reached across the table and took her hand again. ‘Who can say how much pain he was in? And even if he was, what if he wanted to endure it for some reason? What if it wasn’t his decision to die just then, at that moment? That’s the issue.’

That was her Mario, she thought, ever the judge. Always considering the issues, the law.

‘That’s why they want to find out who was there,’ he said.

*
    
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*
    
*
    
*

Hardy figured out how much time he’d spent outdoors on this beautiful day. He’d walked through the fog near his house this morning at a little after seven — call it four minutes to get to where he’d parked the night before. Then he’d stood outside Graham’s house for a total of about two minutes, taking in the sunlight, birdsong, smell of blossoms, talking to Lanier. Thirty seconds walking back to his car at one-fifteen. Two minutes getting from the downtown garage to his office.

Now it was seven forty-five and the sun was a recent memory, the dusk just settling on the buildings around the office. Hardy stood at his window overlooking Sutter Street, his tie undone, coat off, eyes burning. Between Graham Russo and Tryptech, he’d already put in a thirteen-hour day and in that time he’d spent all but eight and a half minutes indoors.

The deposition with Terry Lowitz of the Port of Oakland had ended fifteen minutes ago. They’d had sandwiches brought up at five-thirty when it looked as though it was going to go on for another couple of hours. He’d called Frannie and told her he was going to be late. She was less than thrilled.

Lowitz was a maintenance supervisor whose skills as a raconteur were, Hardy thought, woefully inadequate. It had taken Hardy three tries to get the guy to put his name on the record properly. Mr Lowitz was of the general opinion that the Port of Oakland had never in its history allowed one machine of any kind to run for an instant without being in perfect repair, especially the loading transoms.

Over the course of five hours Hardy had brought up perhaps thirty examples of accidents at the Port, large or small, that might have been attributed to faulty equipment, but Mr Lowitz, when he answered intelligibly at all, had an alternate interpretation for every mishap. He was not going to lose his job by criticizing his employer. Ever.

Hardy walked back to his desk and, without thinking, picked up one of the three darts that lay upon it and flung it at the dartboard across the room. A nanosecond after he released it, he remembered that he was theoretically in the middle of a record round and was shooting for the ‘3.’

The dart hit smack in the middle of the ‘20,’ David Freeman appeared in his doorway with a bottle of wine and some glasses, and the telephone rang.

He threw up his hands. ‘Life,’ he said, ‘it happens all at once.’

Freeman would wait and the phone wouldn’t, so he grabbed at it. ‘Yo.’

‘Hardy. Abe.’

‘By God, I think it is. You sound just like yourself.’

‘It’s a disguise for people who think I’m somebody else.’

‘So what’s up? You’re going to say Graham Russo.’

Freeman came over and put the glasses down on Hardy’s desk, then lifted a haunch onto the corner of it.

Over the phone Hardy heard his prediction come true. ‘I’m calling about Graham Russo.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘This is a courtesy call. You must have impressed Lanier and Evans with your manners. I asked them if they minded if I call you and they said no.’

‘They’re really quite perceptive individuals,’ Hardy said, ‘for police persons. So what about Graham?’

Glitsky told him.

*
    
*
    
*
    
*
    
*

Freeman repeated it, making sure he’d heard it right. ‘Fifty thousand dollars in wrapped bills? Four complete sets of early-fifties baseball cards?’

‘That’s it.’

The old man drank off most of his glass of red wine. Hardy noticed the world outside his window, that night had completely fallen.

He looked at his watch. Eight-fourteen. He had to stop now, call it a day, get home. He’d get a call later if Graham got booked tonight, and he’d have to come down to the jail. He didn’t feel he would survive without a little time off.

David Freeman, on the other hand, had no family or consuming interests outside of the law. He had lived this way for all of his adult life and now, after his own full day in court, he was settling down with a newly filled glass, enthralled with the details of yet another case. It never ended for Freeman — he never wanted it to. ‘So it’s not an assisted suicide after all?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean fifty grand plus the cards, taken from the old man’s safe. This is not what we call altruism. He offed the guy to get the money.’

Hardy waved that off. ‘I don’t think that happened, David. You’ve got to know him.’

‘I don’t need to know him if I’ve got the evidence. If the evidence says he did it, then he did it.’

‘You always say that.’

‘That’s because it’s always true.’ Freeman had settled himself on the couch. He’d brought the bottle over and put it on the coffee table in front of him. He poured himself more wine, swirled it in his glass, sloshed it around in his mouth, the connoisseur. ‘Why don’t you take off your coat and stay awhile? Share this excellent claret with me. Take a break, for Christ’s sake, you’ve been at it all day. This new case of yours has all the makings.’

Hardy threw another dart. The hell with the personal best game, he thought. He’d get it some other time. ‘Believe it or not, spending another hour or two here in the middle of the night discussing a case I’m not even taking is not my idea of a break. I’m thinking about going home, saying hello to my wife before she leaves me, maybe kissing my kids good-night.’